To go from Logarska Dolina to Lake Bled takes about an hour and forty-five minutes. If you use Google maps, it sends you southwest on major highways through the capital Ljubljana. Rick Steves’ guidebook sends you southwest on major highways through the capital Ljubljana because “mountains get in the way.” If you are clueless, mapless American tourists totally dependent on a GPS, you go OVER the mountains on one-and-a-half lane roads with numerous switchbacks! Fun!

Before we left Logarska Dolina, we did swing into the tourist center to say goodbye to Nina, our museum friend. We stayed and chatted with her for about an hour and exchanged e-mail addresses. We hope to stay in touch in case we come back or she comes to the United States. She is a bright, fun, and cheerful girl.

The over-the-mountain with-some-woods drive was made more exciting at the start by the fact that our GPS kept losing signal with the satellites. Once we got out of the looming Logarska mountains, it settled down. My theory was that we were getting nearer and nearer the satellites as we drove up and up.

We arrived at our tourist farm Bed and Breakfast around 2:00. A tourist farm is a working farm that also happens to have a few rooms for rent. Our farm is about a half-mile walk to Lake Bled, a small but beautiful lake that is admittedly a bit of a tourist trap, but it is a pretty one. It has a small island with a hill on it, and on the hill is a cute church. The town is presided over by a very impressive cliff with a castle on it, and the town itself is fairly cute. What we did not know but know now is that Lake Bled is also home to the Slovenian rowing teams who have done quite well in the Olympics.

We dumped our stuff in our room and started walking to the lake, in a gentle but steady rain. In a rare moment of sense, I had listened to Meredith a couple of days ago and bought an umbrella. It came in very handy today. The lake is about 3.5 miles around, and the whole way has a path, which is public. We turned right when we reached the lake, and started toward the town of Bled, about a mile away. Happily, about this time, the rain stopped. We got to Bled and went to a restaurant right on the lake, but we chose to eat inside (facing windows) because of the bugs that had come out after the rain.

We had a very good late lunch and dessert, and we took our time, since it had started raining again, and this time a bit more steadily. Finally, we decided we should just brave the weather, so out we went with our umbrellas. Meredith put me “in charge” for the next few days, so rather than trudge around the lake in a steady rain, I decided to change plans and climb up to the castle, which offered some indoor diversions. We climbed a steep path that became a series of stairs, and made it to the castle, just in time for the rain to start easing up. Ah, well.

The castle is interesting as a castle, with a proper wall and towers and arrow slits and such. It offers a working model of an early printing press and a history of the importance of the press in Slovenia (it was used to print church books in the then-outlawed Slovenian language). We got to see a small photography exhibit on the Bled area that was very good. There is an iron-working shop that sells hand-made iron items. They have an extensive museum about the history of the Bled area, the castle, and the geography and geology of the region. All well and good and interesting.

But the winning reason to go to the castle is to climb as high as possible and admire the view. You can see the lake and the island. You can see the cliff face of the castle. There are small and big mountains (up to about 6,500 feet tall) in every direction. It was spectacular.

After we toured the castle, we headed back down to the town in a misting rain. We ducked into a market and grabbed a couple of sandwiches and candy bars for a supper later back at the B and B, at which point the rain finally stopped for good. We found where we left off on the lake trail, and we continued on our way.

Some of the highlights of the trail included seeing the island from all angles, and seeing the lavish few homes allowed on the lake. We got to see the rowing center, and saw some crews out rowing. There are even some small grandstands set up near the finish areas for the scows. There was a boardwalk built over the lake at the shoreline for about two hundred yards. And all the while, the weather kept getting better and better, with some patches of blue sky peeking out. By the time we finished our lake walk and were headed back home, the sun had come out, and the sky was beautiful with the sun shining off the clouds and the wispy fog on the mountains.

We got back to our farm and were greeted with the happy vision of two kittens staring at us from a stack of railroad ties. Very cute. We headed back to the room for a late supper and called it a day, one that was mostly dry for us.